The Source-ress

Somewhere there was once a Flower, a Stone, a Crystal, a Queen, a King, a Palace, a Lover and his Beloved, and this was long ago, on an Island somewhere in the Ocean 5000 years ago. Such is Love, the Mystic Flower of the Soul. This is the Center, the Self."--C.G. Jung

PREFACE

Welcome to my world--a world ensouled and enlivened by imagery. A world of the seemingly familiar, yet peculiarly mysterious.In our modern culture every image, mundane or divine, has been used and abused. In the Postmodern Era there is no new iconography. In imagery and art, there is nothing new under the Sun. Everything which can be used from religion, myth and symbolism has been used and can only be recycled -- recycled like these collaged images from the trash-heap of society. The materials for these images was literally someone's garbage. My task was therefore, as usual, trying to turn "lead into gold."

Here, in this animated world, images are lovingly juxtaposed with their complements and opposites. Some images just want to "live together." The familiar is combined with the mysterious, reflecting a unique surrealistic vision. Reflectaphors, or reflective metaphors, repeat themselves in each image or poster, as well as jump from image to image--i.e. they echo themes among the various pieces as the series unfolds itself in self-similar fashion, like the iterations of fractals.So, Anima Mundi bids you welcome and acts as our tour-guide or hostess. She coaxes you deeper into the labyrinth of desire and fulfillment, where each of you can find your own resonance, the imagery which speaks the loudest or clearest, or beguiles with the mere whisper.To experience psychic reality means to be in soul, in the realm of the imagination, as if interacting with its inhabitants and locales. Inner visionary experience, be it wrathful or beatific, is an expression of soul.

Through images the unconscious affects our worldview, health and relationships. Soul is the middle world between gross materiality and the spiritual world.Matter, spirit, and ego fight over the soul. Yet soul is a primary experience, virtually our only way of being. Each wants its unique fantasy to reign uppermost. So, the first task is to distinguish soul from spirit, so the body may unite with and be enlivened by both.This is a psychological approach to art and life--giving voice to soul, living life as art. It means the return of a subjective feminine eye on reality. It means the enlivening of our bodies and the world of nature with imagination. When we see soul as the background of all phenomena, we becoming aware of the animating principle and develop a relationship with Her.

All images arise either from body processes (instinct) or psychic forms (spirit). Whether instinct-controlled or spirit-controlled, they are related to physiological processes. They appear psychologically as images, but work physiologically. They produce emotional or visceral aspects, but not in any causal way. The images don't produce reactions. The image is the entire psychophysical gestalt.The soul generates images unceasingly. The soul lives on images and metaphor, especially epistemological metaphors--how we know what we know. These images form the basis of our consciousness. All we can know comes through images, through our multi-sensory perceptions. So, this soul always stays close to the body, close to corporeality, to what "matters."Let the images come into your body. Embrace the image.

ANIMA MUNDI

INTRODUCTION

The ancient art of alchemy was the search for the God-head in matter. The alchemical task was to unify spirit and soul in the body. Psychic reality means to be in soul, esse in anima, as Jung put it. It means an enlarged experience of concrete reality, a dialogue with events, situations and circumstances.Psychic reality means to be in soul, through embodiment (soma) or enlivenment (psyche)--perceiving images viscerally and mentally. Acknowledgment of this force does not constitute Goddess worship--only recognition of the archetypal nature of reality, and the archetypal reality of nature, and our own nature. She is a way of reclaiming the divinity of body, matter, and world. This notion is part of the cultural return of the Feminine.

Jungian analyst, James Hillman invites us into this world:Let us imagine the anima mundi neither above the world encircling it as a divine and remote emanation of spirit, a world of powers, archetypes, and principles transcendent to things, nor within the material world as its unifying panpsychic life-principle. Rather let us imagine the anima mundi as that particular soul-spark, the seminal image, which offers itself through each thing in its visible form. Then anima mundi indicates the animated possibilities presented by each event as it is, its sensuous presentation as face bespeaking its interior image--in short, its availability to imagination, its presence as a psychic reality. Not only animals and plants ensouled as in the Romantic vision, but soul is given with each thing; God-given things of nature and man-made things of the street.This resurrection of the soul of the world means a raising of consciousness of created things, the world's psychic reality. Physical reality becomes psychic, and psyche becomes real--it "matters." The difference between soul and external things no longer matters. Inner and outer world are both real and in fact One World.

Image, metaphor and symbol bridge the abyss between matter and spirit. Images are the subtle net that unites symbols. They are integrated with feeling, mind and imagination. We can see soul in all natural objects. We can notice our fantasies constantly conditioning our experience of reality. Knowledge of spirit doesn't come from ideas, even revelations, but through a reflective process.

I began this series of collages shortly after the death of both of my parents three days apart from one another. I am not a trained artist, but a clinical hypnotherapist with a strong Jungian background in symbolism. Realizing I could use this for processing my own pain and grief, I began them as Art Therapy. I had originally made a few as examples for my students in a college class I taught, "An Introduction to Depth Psychology."I found in my therapy practice a tendency for clients to present certain recurrent motifs, such as black holes, "blacker than black," tunnels, images of chaotic breakdown, etc.

Prior, I had been writing a book called Dreamhealing with shaman/therapist Graywolf Fred Swinney. It was about Aesklepian dream healing, a technique developed around the metaphors of the then-new science of Chaos Theory which is now known as Complexity. In this deepening process, the client becomes each element the imagination presents in turn. Immersed in this imagery, I sought to create some visual images which might intimate this process.So, my posters are gestalts--where all elements are co-temporaneous, existing in time holographically--presented together even though they image a dynamic process. Each of them constitutes a shamanic dream journey--a full immersion in the inner world.None of them are contrived beforehand--all were emergent experiences of just letting the image work themselves.

No theme was determined in advance. The posters themselves dictate some of what must happen on them. In order for them to appear seamless, I had to hide or disguise the seams in various fashions. Yes, sometimes "less is more," but most often more was needed to insure a seamless quality. This was not a project were minimalism even could prevail.Part of the burden and joy of working in this medium is using what one has, or can find, what is spontaneously available. Jungian psychology uses the notion of the bricoleur, the craftsman who works with that which is at hand. This includes the psychological situation as well as the materials.

My grief work accentuated the death-rebirth motif which is ubiquitous in therapy in any case.In their formative stages, the elements were not fixed on the canvas, and sometimes due to electrostatics, heat, and gravity "things moved of their own accord." Almost invariably, this was an improvement over any intuitive or deliberate placement I might have made. So, it was a process of flowing with the animating process, rather than dictating the process.Later, they organized themselves into larger groups. There were obvious thematic connections for some of them, but others were not so obvious until there were hundreds of them.

Their order has no relationship to the time of assembly. I have never re-sorted them, but for some reason the over-all story of the text for each leads seamlessly into the next, providing a narrative stream. The text for each piece suggested itself long after completion through a recognition process, or sometimes immediately by synchronicity. They assembled themselves and with one another by a process I can only describe as "synarchy."The awesome pandaemonium of imagery flowed forth spontaneously and my ego could not fight its way free.

Rather, I had to surrender to the forces that often crossed my subjective will. I was a slave to the process for some time, producing several pieces a week for long periods of time, and sometimes even doing more than one per day. The mystery images are a compelling source of transformation and healing, and it worked! The physician healed herself, or rather opened to the inner healer and let time take care of the rest.

[The poster originals are 24 x 36, and are assembled completely by hand. No computer enhancement has been used on any of them. All were done between 1994 and 1999.]

THE NATURE OF ART

What a picture means to the viewer is strongly dependent on past experience and knowledge. In this respect the visual image is not only a representation of “reality” but a symbolic system. Language distinguishes between the functions of expression, arousal and description, or symptom, sign, and symbol. It is important to distinguish the expression of an emotion from its arousal, the symptom from the signal, especially in the “communication” of feeling.Communications may be symptomatic of emotive states or they may function as signals to release certain reactions. Human language and art has developed the descriptive function to inform others of a particular state of affairs past, present, or future, observable or distant, actual or conditional, visionary or imaginal.

The visual image is supreme in its capacity for arousal, while its use for expressive purposes is problematic, and unaided it may require a matching statement for clarity or illumination to convey the creator’s intent or experience. Art can fail to communicate its message because the viewer lacks the experience or context or code to “get it,” as the artist saw or intended it.We are “programmed” to respond to certain visual signals; but this arousal function of sights is not confined to definite images. Configurations of lines and colors have the potential to influence our emotions. What is usually described as communication is concerned with matter rather than with mood. Like verbal messages, images are vulnerable to the random interference engineers call “noise.” They use the device of redundancy to overcome this hazard. In art, this redundancy of imagery and themes creates the “style” of the artists and the body of work reflects the issues and concerns to be communicated.The chance of a correct reading of the image is governed by three variables: the code, the caption, and the context. Jointly the media of word and image increase the probability of a correct reconstruction or effect on the beholder.

The mutual support of language and image facilitates memorizing or memorability. The use of two independent channels guarantees easier reconstruction in the mind’s eye. The image works in conjunction with other factors to convey a clear-cut message that can be translated into words. But the real value of imagery is its capacity to convey information that cannot be coded in any other way, frequently through the use of allusion or metaphors of known objects or entities.The information extracted from an image (in particular, an archetypal image) can be quite independent of the intentions of its maker. However faithful an image or reproduction, conveys visual information, thje process of selection always reveals the maker’s interpretation of what he considers relevant.

The “TELLTALE PICTURE” requires that interpretation on the part of the image maker must always be matched by the interpretation of the viewer. It is only when we are confronted with a totally unfamiliar kind of structure that we are aware of the puzzle element in any representation.The easier it is to separate the code from the content, the more we can rely on the image to communicate a particular kind of information. A selective code that is understood to be a code enables the maker of the image to filter our certain kinds of information and to encode only those feature that are of interest to the recipient. Such renderings are transitions from a representation to diagrammatic mapping and the value of the later process for the communication of information needs no emphasis.What is characteristic of the map is the addition of a key to the standardized code. It is only a small step from the abstraction of the map to a chart or diagram showing relations that are originally not visual but temporal or logical.

A network of logical dependencies (images held in the network of a piece), the diagram will always spread out before our eyes what a verbal description could only present in a string of statements. The image is non-linear.Reading an image like the reception of any other message, is dependent on prior knowledge of possibilities, we can only recognize what we know, consciously or a priori from the unconscious. Mysticism and alchemy have often employed imagery or visual symbols to appeal to seekers after revelations. To such seekers the symbol is felt to both convey and conceal more than the medium of rational discourse.One of the reasons for this persistent feeling is the diagrammatic aspect of the symbol, its ability to convey relations more quickly and more effectively than a string of words. A symbol can become the focus of meditation. If familiarity breeds contempt, unfamiliarity breeds awe.

A strange symbol suggests a hidden mystery, and if its known to be ancient, it is felt to embody some esoteric lore too sacred to be revealed to the multitudes.Art is not produced merely for aesthetic effects. It is the arousal function that determines the use of the medium. The cult image and its shrine mobilize the emotions that belong to the prototype. The power of such images is stronger than any rational consideration. There are few who can escape the spell of a great cult image in its setting. The mnemonic power of the image means the power of symbolism to transform a metaphor into a memorable image through vivid portrayal. Allegorical images turn an abstract thought into a picture, a poetic evocation of feelings.There is a contrast between the prose and the poetry of image-making. The Romantic concept of genius stressed the function of art as self-expression, but the expressive symptoms of emotions is to be distinguished in the theory of communication from the dimension of arousal or description.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Innovation in either the sciences or arts occurs only when a single mind perceives in disorder a deep new unity. Science is an attempt to control our surroundings by entering into them and understanding them from inside, and in a subjective reality, so is art and mysticism. Both employ the processes of discovery, invention and creation. A contemplative civilization values mystic immersion in nature and the immanent emptiness within all nature (the ground state), the union with what already exists.Art is a personal, though often anonymous creation. And scientific discovery may be as well. Both science and art seek to find the design of nature in her detail. It requires inductive thinking followed into the detail of nature, and our nature to develop visionary insight.Theories are imaginative choices which often outstrip the given facts. Induction images more than there is ground for and creates relations, which at bottom can never be verified. Every induction is a speculation and it guesses at a unity which facts we know suggest. Every innovator has a particular way of looking at and arranging the facts, guided by a sense of aesthetic unity and beauty. Science shows us that nature has a unity, and this unity makes her laws seem beautiful in their simplicity. Our demand that nature be lawful is a demand for unity. We seek it instinctively.

We become creative, whether as artists, scientists or mystics, when we find a new unity in the variety of nature, a likeness between things (symbols or images) that were not thought alike before, and this yields a sense of richness and of understanding. The creative mind looks for unexpected likenesses, new analogies, and engaged the whole personality.Art and science may likewise bridge the conflict between paradoxical analogies, between poetic metaphors, and enrich our understanding of the world without completing it.

The images we create depend on our factual grasp of the relation between the symbols in the image. Power is contained in conjoining minute particulars which denote the change of scale between the metaphor and its application. This is the value of originality.We expect artists and scientist to be forward-looking, to fly in the face of what is established, to create new paradigms, not what is acceptable, but what will become accepted. Like art, science is preoccupied less with facts than with relations, less with numbers than with arrangement.New vision is the continuing search for structure. A theory is the creation of unity in what is diverse by the discovery of unexpected likenesses. In all of them innovation is pictured as an act of imagination, a seeing of what others have not yet seen. It is indeed, a creative observation of outer or inner worlds: "The Tell-tale Art."

CHAOSOPHY 2000Today we are in a period of cultural and personal expansion. We are experiencing not just the revival of ancient images, but also the harvest of all the world's cultures, belief systems, ways of knowing, seeing, doing, being. Gradually we discover that these stories are our own stories, that they bear the amplified rhythms of our own lives, deepending and enhancing us, filling us with a sense of the fractal resonance of the mythic life within our own.Working with myth, we assume the passion and the pathos of Isis as she seeks to recover the remains of her husband Osiris; with Parsifal, we take on the quest for the Grail; we labor with Hercules and travel with Odysseus into the archetypal idlands of inner and outer worlds. It requires that we undertake the extraordinary task of dying to our current, local selves and of being reborn to our eternal selves.A psychology with a mythic or sacred base demands that we have the courage both to release the limitation brought about by old wounds and toxic bitterness and to gain access to theundiminished self with its vast inner storehouse of capacities. We can then use these capacities to prepare ourselves for the greater agenda--becoming an instrument through which the source may play its great music.Then, like the hero or heroine of myth, we may, regardless of our circumstances, become an inspiration for helping culture and consciousness move toward its next level of possibility. At this we startle, we shake.

The scope of this dream demands that we live out of our true Essence, which is always too large for our local contracted consciousness to contain. It requires many mythic adventures of the soul to reloom body and mind.Myths have such power because they are full of archetypes. Archetypes are many things--primal forms, codings of the deep unconscious, constellations of psychic energy, patterns of relationship. Our ancestors saw them in the heavens, as Mother Earth, Father Sky, Sister Wind. They were the great relatives from whom we derived, and they not only gave us our existence, they continue to personify as mythic characters and their stories, such as that of the holy child.As major organs of the psyche, archetypes give us our essential connections, and without them we lose the gossamer bridge that joins spirit with nature, mind and body, and self with the metabody of the universe.

Archetypes are organs of Essence, the cosmic blueprints of how it all works.Because they contain so much, archetypes frustrate analysis and perhaps can only be known by direct experience. Thus, in the journey of transformation, we participate in these symbolic dramas and actively engage in archetypal existence. We form a powerful sense of identity with the archetypal character, and this mythic being becomes an aspect of ourselves writ large. Symbolic happenings appear with undisguised relevance, not only for our own lives and problems, but also for the remaking of society.Joseph Campbell told Jean Houston that she is supposed to help find the correspondences between myth and everything else--history and science and psychology and what's trying to happen in the world--the pathways from the past and the pathways to the future.

Myth sheds its radiant light on the multiplicity of human learning as well as the mysteries of the human heart. They are the "mything links."Campbell summarized the process in his classic accounts of the Hero's journey with its characteristic tasks, such as "the call to adventure." Some of us feel the call every minute. The next stage in Campbell's cycle of the hero's journey is the refusal of the call, putting the summons off or delaying it because it comes at an inconvenient time or because one doesn't feel worthy.The hero risks crossing the threshold of adventure, to enter a realm of amplified power. In the traditional journeys, this stage involves leaving the world of ordinary reality and entering the inner, visionary realms, confronting the guardian of the threshold. The real threshold guardian is in ourselves, the part of us who will not release our hold on consciousness enough to let the ego dissolve our boundaries and ooze into that deeper realm, the via positiva.

Once across, the hero is swallowed by the unknown, be it a whale, a wolf, a sarcophagus, or a cave. It takes many guises and can take the form of a depression or ingression, even a strong need to get away from it all. The road of trials in the hero's journey is a time of incredible tests, ordeals, and extraordinary adventures.After securing the boon, there is magic flight back across the threshold with the boon intact...integrating the results of the journey. Once you answer the call to a larger life, there is no turning back.

We learn to think mythically. Life is allied with myth in order that we may advance along an evolutionary path carrying us nearer to the spiritual source that lures us into greater becoming.It grants us access to the DNA of the human psyche, the source patterns originating in the ground of our being. It gives us the key to our personal and historical existence. Without mythic keys we would have neither culture nor religion, no art, architecture, drama, ritual, epic, social customs, or mental disorders.We humans are the storied, mythic links between the great patterns of existence and the local experiences that assure their continuity in the world of time and history. In my current work, I often use variations of this pattern as the loom on which to weave journeys of transformation drawn from the world's great myths and stories. I find that regardless of the culture, people will go further and faster in developing human capacities if their training is tied to a story, especially a myth. For myth transcends and thus tansforms our usual blocks and condititionings, carrying us into a realm in which these need not constrain us. And if the myth is a familiar one, present in the fabric of the culture, it works even better.How do we achieve our own renaissance of mind and spirit? By connecting with a potent sense of our own Essence.

Essence is not a place or a time, an insight or even a state of mind. It is the deepest part of our nature, an actual presence that is innate and inborn. When it wears a personal face, it is called an angel or a daimon, or genius. Still others think of it, in its incorporeal form, as the soul. It does not develop with education or maturity.It is beyond symbols, and is, therefore, neither archetype nor angel, neither wise old man or woman, nor divine child. These symbols point the way to Essence, the incorruptible "diamond body." Essence is so real, so substantial, that it exceeds all symbols, images, and language in deep and profound living embodied experience.When we first climb out of the bottom of the well, we experience Essence as a strange and beautiful country of the soul. It brings a clarity, a precision that seldom comes from reasoning, intuition, or insight.The deepest values, purposes, and patterns for life, the richest potential coding for existence, the source level of creative patterns, innovative actions, and ideas become known to us from the perspective of Essence through its rediscovery of life's higher purpose through the images.